Mage: The Ascension vs Rock & Stone
Compare Mage: The Ascension and Rock & Stone side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mage: The Ascension | Rock & Stone | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Modern, Horror | Fantasy |
| Tags | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics | Classic Fantasy, Comedy, Dungeon Crawl, Fast-Paced, Heroic, High-Power, Random Tables, Rules-Light, Strong GM Support, Theater of the Mind |
| Core Mechanic | Build a d10 pool from an Attribute plus an Ability and count each die that meets or exceeds the difficulty, usually 6. Each rolled 1 cancels a success, and a roll with no successes and at least one 1 botches. Magick uses Arete instead: the highest Sphere plus coincidence or vulgarity and witnesses establishes the base difficulty, with situational modifiers applied afterward. Successes determine the Effect, and vulgar casting risks Paradox. | For a test, roll a d20 and add the relevant skill; a total above the GM-set difficulty succeeds, while an exact match succeeds with a complication. Natural 20s and 1s produce especially heroic successes and fatal failures. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d20 |
| Complexity | Very High | Low |
| Accessibility | High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | All Rights Reserved | AELF Open License Version 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | Commercial publishing allowed — AELF Open License Version 1.0a |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | Free |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Sebastian Hahn |
| Year | 2015 | 2025 |
| Best For | Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world. | Groups who want a fast, rules-light dungeon crawl about unusually capable dwarven mercenaries, with a compact setting and a ready-to-run starting adventure. |
| Highlights | Nine Spheres combine to build open-ended Effects, allowing the same capability to emerge through different paradigms, practices, and instruments. Coincidental and vulgar classifications make subtlety a tactical choice because conspicuous magick raises difficulty and accumulates Paradox. Focus ties belief to procedure, so a mage's worldview determines the tools and rituals used to alter reality. | Gold committed to the dwarven hoard pays for levels, tying treasure recovery directly to advancement. Archetypes grant selectable active and passive abilities, giving each dwarf a distinct role within the shared skill system. Carousing turns a between-adventure roll into complications and opportunities that can seed later expeditions. |
| Considerations | Improvised Effects place frequent adjudication on the Storyteller, who must apply Sphere permissions, focus, required successes, and consequences consistently. Vulgar magick generates Paradox even on success, so overt power can punish a mage through injury or metaphysical breakdown. Faction choices can make a cabal internally hostile, so character concepts need shared motives before play. | Characters are built around the last-dwarves premise, although the rules permit other heroes. Advancement grants its largest skill and ability gains through level four, after which levels add only hit points and one skill point. Spells are fixed archetype abilities with limited daily uses, so groups seeking open-ended magic will not find it here. |